Page 117 of The Spider & the Storm

I held my head higher and straightened my spine with an urgent need to defend myself. I knew what I had seen. I'd seen him. I'dheardhim.

“Are you sure? He was at my house at about eight forty-five.”

His deep brown eyes dipped to stare into the cold, dark night behind me and shrugged as he shook his head. “I could look at the footage, but—”

“I'd appreciate it.”

He nodded slowly and swept a beefy hand inside his office. “Then, make yourselves at home.”

***

Stormy and I stood behind Max's high-backed office chair, arms crossed and eyes pinned to the computer screen. Max clicked his mouse repeatedly, flipping through the two dozen cameras set up over the grounds.

“Normally, if someone trespasses, I get an alert,” he explained almost absentmindedly. “But every now and then, someone comes in before the gates are closed, and I don't catch on until—” He cut himself off as a dark, moonlit image of mycottage filled the screen. “All right. Here we are. What time did you say this was at?”

I frowned. “I don't know that he was actuallyatmy house,” I said while thinking about the paraphernalia left on my doormat and Luke's bike.

“Hmm.” Max barely nodded.

“It was at about a quarter to nine,” I answered still, and he gave another little nod as he clicked a few times and began to scroll through the footage.

Trees swayed. A spider skittered backward over the lens, and I noted the way Max flinched at the close-up underside of its abdomen. Moments passed before my truck drove backward and stalled beside my gate.

“Okay.” I held a hand over his shoulder. “It was around here that I came back from chasing him.”

Max nodded, continuing to the point where I had come out of the house. Then, he played the footage.

The three of us watched my preoccupied walk from the house to the truck. We watched as I flipped through the keys on the ring in my pocket. And we watched as I looked up, an expression of wide-eyed alarm blanketing my face.

“See, that's where I saw him,” I said, pointing at the screen.

Max nodded slowly, still watching intently, his hands folded on the desk.

But then the image scrambled, and a cloud of static covered the footage for a second before it cut to me running back to the truck.

“What the fuck?” I muttered breathlessly, my hand dropping to the back of Max's chair.

“Shit,” Max grumbled, leaning forward and clicking around. “Sometimes, it does this. Hold on.”

But no amount of clicking could recover the missing segment of film. There was no fall against the truck. No shouting. No break into a run. It was as if it’d all never happened, apart from the sore spot on my knee from where it had made impact.

“There's no other camera?” I asked, my blood boiling to the temperature of lava.

Max's exhalation was long as he began clicking around the screen. “I could check a few others, but this is the only one pointed directly at the house.”

“Maybe he ran past another one,” Stormy offered, speaking for the first time since we'd gotten out of the truck.

“Honestly, I doubt it,” Max admitted with a helpless shrug. “For a property this large, you'd expect more cameras around the place, but I guess they never saw a reason for—”

“What's that?” I pointed at a blur on one of the tiled screens laid out across his monitor.

Max scratched at the scruff on his chin as he clicked, enlarging the camera feed. He scrolled through as we watched a fuzzy figure of a person dash across the screen in backward slow motion.

“That must be him,” I murmured, my voice low, my anger bubbling.

Max hummed a short sound of contemplation. “Could be. This camera is right by the southern corner of the fence too. He probably ran by and hopped over. It's pretty dark and secluded back there.”

“So, he's gone?” Stormy chimed in, hope lilting her tone.

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